I was at a music festival in Auckland on New Year's Eve when I saw, on my phone, the news that "dangerous drugs, made with pesticides and paints, have been found at Rhythm and Vines." And that patrons had received a warning about about the potentially poisonous drugs that evening, via a push-notification from festival management that went to all phones on site.

I still haven't been able to locate a screenshot of the actual warning (but would be keen to see one), so for the moment I have to assume that it was identical, or at least very similar, to the one posted on Facebook by the local DHB.

On one level, it was the kind of health-based early warning that harm reduction advocates have been calling for as a lifesaving measure for years. On another, it was frustratingly vague, to the point of being almost useless. The harm reduction organisation Know Your Stuff, which was not on site at R&V, politely tweeted:

We urge those issuing alerts to at a minimum include a description of the pills/substance, and likely symptoms from consuming.

The part of the alert urging anyone suffering "adverse effects" from drugs to see onsite medical services was salient in a general sense – and the request that, if possible, they bring a sample of what they'd taken was useful. It might have helped to emphasise that no one bringing such samples to medics would face police action, but it seems notable that police made no arrests of any kind at Rhythm and Vines.

Ruwani Perera managed to introduce more useful information – after the fact – in her Newshub report, with the news that the bad drugs were pills and "the pills look like MDMA or Ecstasy and are purple."

But we still don't know what quantity was seized, what the exact contents were. Inevitably, the vagueness of the alert has led some people to suspect that it was simply a scare story to put people off taking drugs altogether, rather than a real warning. I would hope not, because the ultimate effect of that will simply be to lead users to ignore such warnings. That's obviously undesirable.

It was also unclear who had actually issued the warning in the first place. The DHB? Festival organisers? The police? The One News report offers a bit more context there. It appears that Gisborne police had borrowed a spectrometer from Customs to analyse contraband drugs seized by festival security. Some pills were just sugar.

It is likely that a properly set-up spectrometer, drawing on a library of reference profiles, would be able to promptly identify toxic paint and pesticides. More so given that in the field Customs uses the FirstDefender handheld Ramam spectrometers, which are built to identify almost any chemical, including those found in poisons and explosives.

But the FirstDefender is a quick-detection device, and doesn't have the level of forensic analysis offered by the likes of the FT-IR scanner owned by the New Zealand Drug Foundation, which is used in the field by Know Your Stuff. It could be difficult to identify multiple substances in one sample, especially for non-expert users – and to determine actual quantities of the contaminants.

So did the machine pick up mere traces of pesticides and paint? That's possible. But even traces of unwelcome contaminants should be a warning sign. And it's worth noting that one of FirstDefender's shortcomings is its relatively poor detection limits, so there had to be enough of the contaminants for the spec to pick up. So it was worth a warning, I think – just a better one.

Some of the information in the One News story came from Police minister Stuart Nash, who visited the site and was also shown the spectrometer by officers. What he had to say was immensely encouraging:

Festival-goers overseas are often able to get their drugs tested openly to check that they're safe and that they are what they're claimed to be.

And the New Zealand Government would like to see pill testing become the norm here, too.

"You know, you had 20,000 young Kiwis party and have a really good time here. I would like to see drug testing at festivals. I think it saves lives, it save hospitalisations. And it's actually the right thing to do. And it's dealing with the reality in which we find ourselves," Mr Nash said.

It's a shame that the government has satisfied itself with talking about drug-checking at this point, rather than moving forward and actually amending the Misuse of Drugs Act in time for this summer's festivals. The truth is that festival organisers don't want kids getting sick or dying from bad drugs, but they put their businesses – and specifically their event insurance – at risk by acknowledging that people use drugs at all (other than alcohol, which is easily the most problematic one at large events).

But we seem to have reached a point where politicians, police and health agencies are on board with realistic harm reduction strategies. A point where, however flawed, an alert has been issued to people who may consume something very harmful.

Trust is critical for people in possession of illegal substances to bring them to us for testing. It helps that we’re not the authorities. We are a grass-roots organisation and many of our volunteers have attended, assisted, or organised festivals for more than a decade. Being members of the community we serve nurtures a higher level of trust, in what can be a very exposing situation for our clients.

We are going out of our way to provide a free service for our clients, so in a sense, it’s a gift from us to them. This sets up a mutual obligation. We’ve provided our clients with a service that they value; it’s now up to them to reciprocate by providing us with something that we value, namely making safer choices about their drug use.

This kind of harm reduction, the kind that works, is about more than fancy machines. Jez concludes:

The majority of drug users we see are not addicts or drug abusers. They are adults who want to have a good time, are willing to take on a small amount of risk to do this, and are keen to reduce that risk.

When someone who has purchased drugs and is planning on taking them becomes someone who is willing to not take them and dispose of their drugs in front of us, that shows the confidence they are placing in our testing and explains the remarkable effectiveness of this form of harm reduction. Put simply, providing factual, objective information to allow people to make better choices leads to them making better choices.

Ironically, the story linked above emphasises the extraordinary lengths Australian police are going to to detect and prosecute drug possession at events. It's not keeping anyone safe. If anything, it's doing the opposite. But this most recent death has moved the leader of Latham's former party in New South Wales to rethink his opposition to drug-checking. Things may be changing there too.

Know Your Stuff have also responded to my request for comment, saying that some harm reduction is better than none, but:

the people doing it need to have experience in forensic testing with a harm reduction focus. The alert that was issued contained no information that would help people identify the substance and thus relies on an assumption that people would discard their drugs on the off-chance. This is highly unlikely given that NZers are accustomed to some risk associated with not knowing what's in their pills.

Additionally there is no information in the alert about symptoms that would help people to know if they are in danger.

"It was also unclear who had actually issued the warning in the first place. The DHB? Festival organisers? The police? The One News report offers a bit more context there. It appears that Gisborne police had borrowed a spectrometer from Customs to analyse contraband drugs seized by festival security. Some pills were just sugar."

Caveat emptor. Fraudulent products abound when there's no regulation of manufacturing. But the lack of info around the warning is indeed a serious concern. Just the media folk involved being lazy or incompetent instead of informing the public? Perhaps.

Do police have a code of conduct clause that applies to the delivery of public health and safety warnings? If so, correct professional procedure would supply the source of the warning to the media. If not, Nash ought to point out to the commissioner that he needs to incorporate a suitable clause in the code.

Someone ought to pursue this one until a satisfactory outcome is achieved. Mickey Mouse public health and safety warnings are not just a bad look for the govt and police. They make Aotearoa look third-world.

Hi, I am the Director of KnowYourStuffNZ. We are actively working with authorities and event organisers to develop consistent best practice for harm reduction at events. This includes developing an appropriate format for issuing alerts about dangerous substances. There are already successful models being used overseas and it will be fairly simple for NZ to adapt one of those for our use, however historically there has been little will to do this work. We have welcomed the indications that the attitudes may be changing.

All of our work would be assisted by the government following up its interest in a health-focused approach to drugs with some action on reviewing the MoDA to remove the barriers to harm reduction that currently exist.

Excellent, Wendy. https://knowyourstuff.nz/about/So good to know that you folks have organised to do this. My relevant experience is with psychedelic drugs long ago, but even in the early seventies products laced with dangerous additives were on the market. That's due to prohibition preventing quality control in manufacturing from being imposed by the govt.

I presume you are advising Chloe in respect of any govt lack of initiative apparent. Lobbying the right people is part of how democracy is meant to work, and the coalition parties seem distinct from the Greens in not having drug reform advocates as far as I can tell.

They (intentionally?) left "illegal" out of that. "I drank a lot of alcohol yesterday and now I have a headache and am extremely photosensitive" qualifies. Curse those people putting ethanol in paint thinners!

"I took a paracetamol and my headache went away... I fear the tablet may have contained paracetamol!"

It’s pretty clear that the first line in “intox assessment” and drug searches is event security, rather than police. He talks about busting a carload of young men on entry to the event, finding weed, a supply quantity of MDMA, scales and bags. They seem to have been almost stupid enough to deserve it. Less so these two girls, especially given that the default action seems to be confiscation:

Police were not checking cars neither were sniffer dogs involved.Security staff on site were conducting vehicle, bag, and person searches on entry to the event. I mostly found booze, a couple of weapons, and MDMA and weed. Last night I was doing intox assessment at the main gate, and two girls stopped in front of me organising their bags. One of them said “do you have the fucking chewing gum?” So I searched the bags, found a small bag of MDMA, and passed them off to the Police who were standing nearby. My workmate found a bag of crack in the grass in the queue setup outside the bar he was working on.

But he does say this:

You’re right, we’ll never stop it so we take a safe approach to make sure they’re ok. Especially after the fiasco with the pink Porsche’s last year.Managing the queues, 80% of the people buying drinks were on MDMA.

Independent testing tents that let you know what's in recreational drugs could become a regular feature at New Zealand festivals, Police Minister Stuart Nash says.

"I think they're a fantastic idea and should be installed at all our festivals," he said. "But I need to see how it works and better understand the implications of it first."

The idea behind recreational drug testing is not to stop drug use but reduce harm, by letting consumers of illicit pills know if the drugs they are taking have been mixed with other dangerous chemicals.

"The war on drugs hasn't worked in the past 20 years, so it's time to change to a more compassionate and restorative approach," Nash said.

Australian politics suffers from a disproportionate numbers of loony idiots, and while most come from the right the occassional one - such as Latham - comes from the left. He's been a total fringe character for years, reknown for saying increasinly dumb things in a futile effort for relevancy & some media attention.

Australian politics suffers from a disproportionate numbers of loony idiots, and while most come from the right the occassional one - such as Latham - comes from the left. He's been a total fringe character for years, reknown for saying increasinly dumb things in a futile effort for relevancy & some media attention.

I'm only surprised it took him this long to throw in his lot with Pauline Hanson. Maybe he gave up on pulling the ALP even further Right?

It does suggest there's no reality-based opposition, and even the saner right wing pundits have decided that this isn't one that makes them look good. I think the discussion has largely turning into a "allow pill testing vs let them die" argument (per Stuff comments).

"having drug-free festivals is not a hardline approach"... no, it's a religious approach. If only they took the same approach to other political questions. "God will appoint our candidates directly so we do not need to participate in the election" maybe.

"having drug-free festivals is not a hardline approach"... no, it's a religious approach.

Ironically, even Parachute was never drug-free :-)

But yeah, that Stuff comments thread is something. People demanding that festivals crack down on drugs. Dude, in New South Wales police put on drug dog teams outside the gates, inside the gates and at nearby transit stations, and they're nowhere near drug-free – but people just die more often.

I'm so glad our politics is different here. In government, individual National MPs weren't really hostile towards drug-checking (Know Your Stuff used to have an onsite placard that quoted Bill English: "A good idea I suppose") even if they weren't going to do anything about it.

Also, just to set the record straight, Anna Wood died from hyponatremia because she’d been spun bullshit stories about drugs by people like Drug Free Australia, and thought drinking gallons of water would keep her safe.

If she’d been able to talk with an organisation like KnowYourStuffNZ beforehand, we could have set her straight on that.